September Song

by Colin Murray

  Dave Mountjoy was wailing incoherently, and it was only when Nelson Smith shouted that I realized what Dave was saying.

  ‘That’s a warning for Ricky,’ Nelson yelled. ‘Tell him to stay out of my business or there’ll be worse.’ And Nelson and his boys backed away, still pointing their guns in our general direction.

  I didn’t wait to see what would happen next. I stripped off my jacket and ran back through the doorway into the office, holding the coat in front of me. Someone – I think it must have been Charlie Lomax speaking about his experience in the fire service during the war – told me that you should keep low when entering a blazing building. It was something to do with the way the smoke rose, I seemed to recall. So, I dutifully crouched down and waddled forward, my jacket, for the time being, keeping the worst of the heat away from me. I’d forgotten just how much noise a fire makes when sucking in air. I couldn’t hear anything above the roar and the crackle from the burning wood. And I couldn’t see anything through the thick, black smoke edged with darting orange flames that lashed the ceiling.

  ‘Ricky,’ I yelled, but there was no response.

  I edged further forward and found myself next to the desk. Inconsequentially, I found myself thinking of the unfinished letter in the typewriter. Suddenly, Bix Beiderbecke was playing in my head. I don’t know if Bix was trying to tell me something, but he was tootling the chorus of ‘There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears’ for all he was worth.

  I pushed feebly at the desk and moved it a few inches out of the way, crawled a bit further and reached out with my right hand. The heat was really intense. I was sweating like I hadn’t sweated before and felt my skin scorching even behind the pathetic protection afforded by my jacket. I reached out with my hand again and felt around. It brushed against some fabric. It felt like Ricky Mountjoy’s pretty blue suit. I grabbed the collar and hauled.

  He didn’t move.

  I braced myself and pulled again. This time he slithered a couple of inches. I moved backwards, braced myself again and pulled. I felt like my arm was going to come out of its socket but he slid another six inches.

  Painfully slowly, long darts of flame flicking out towards us all the way, my eyes stinging unbearably, I dragged him towards the door, inch by muscle-straining inch. I tried not to think about the fact that the fire was probably travelling faster than we were. And I tried not to notice when the desk started to smoke and then burst into flame with a great crack as we came alongside it. I concentrated on other things. No one would, after all, have to clean Ricky’s spat blood from the floor. Ricky wasn’t going to stripe me or Jeannie Summers with his razor. And the great Bix was still belting away in my head.

  You’re right, Bix, I thought, but this is no sweet man, and I ain’t crying for him, though, God knows, I am sweating.

  If there’s a world record for covering eighteen feet in the slowest possible time, I reckon I must have broken it. But, somehow, I made it, and we popped out of that doorway followed by a billowing pillar of thick black and grey choking smoke and the odd lick of flame.

  George and Brian were standing just by the door, and they took Ricky from me and carried him ten feet away from the office and laid him down by Dave. I wondered if he was dead.

  My sore and stinging eyes hurt so much that I could scarcely see, and the smoke felt like lumps of suet pudding in my lungs. I sat down and heaved and coughed and heaved and coughed some more. And then I heaved and coughed again.

  Jeannie Summers suddenly materialized next to me and stroked my sweaty forehead. ‘You could have been killed,’ she said. ‘Why did you do that for that animal?’

  I couldn’t speak so I didn’t say, ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know,’ but that’s all I could have replied.

  She leaned down and kissed my grimy, smoke-streaked, scorched cheek. I could feel that the skin was scorched, and I knew it must be smoke-streaked and grimy because hers was. I tried to smile at her, but I suspect it came out more as a grimace.

  And then I laid down and passed out to the distant sound of clanging bells. Some observant railwayman from the shunting yards must have called the fire brigade.

  I couldn’t have been out for long because the emergency vehicles hadn’t arrived when I sat up – though, judging by the noise the bells were making, they weren’t far away. Funnily enough, I already felt better. There was a nasty taste in my mouth, and I thought I’d probably be coughing for a month, but, aside from the burgeoning bump on the back of my head from George’s gun barrel and some nasty-looking blisters on the back of my right hand, I wasn’t in bad shape.

  Miss Summers was still sitting next to me, holding her jacket together in front of her breasts.

  ‘Right,’ I croaked – not everything was in full working order – ‘let’s retrieve your handbag from the car before the fire engine and the police arrive.’

  She looked warily around, but Nelson and his boys had long since departed and Dave and the others were huddled around Ricky’s prone body.

  ‘How’s he?’ I managed to rasp out.

  ‘Still breathing,’ she said. ‘And not too badly charred. More’s the pity.’ She looked down at me. ‘You knew all along, didn’t you? Where I’d put the drugs.’

  ‘I guessed,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  She sighed. ‘Lee thought we could sell them. He reckoned there might be a few hundred dollars’ worth. It would pay the solicitor.’

  I coughed and tasted smoke. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Bad guys want ’em back. I have to be straight with them. I can find some money for the brief. Silks are another matter, but we’ll see.’

  I struggled up and realized that my knees were creaking more than a bit. All that crouching and hauling had taken its toll. We both slowly walked, unnoticed, to the Consul. I reached in, pulled out the handbag and gave it to her just as the fire engine rattled around the corner and bumped through the entrance, across the muddy forecourt and slewed to a halt by the car.

  The office was burning fiercely, and there wasn’t much the firemen could do to save it. It would be a burnt-out shell before too long. But they rolled out their hoses, anyway. And they were all bustling activity and reassuring competence.

  The second fire engine clanged to a halt behind the other one. It took about three seconds for the second crew to recognize they weren’t needed. They hung about for a few minutes and then announced they were off.

  I begged a lift from them for me and Miss Summers, and they happily agreed to drop us off outside the Gaumont. One of them did ask if I shouldn’t wait for the ambulance that had been summoned for little Ricky and be given the once-over by the quacks at Whipps Cross, but I said I’d be as right as ninepence after a rest, a wash, an aspirin and a change of clothes. He didn’t look entirely convinced but shrugged and helped me up into the cab.

  The truth was that I wasn’t entirely convincing because I thought that I probably did need a bandage or two for the hand, but I really didn’t want to hang around and have to explain anything to the police should they turn up.

  And, anyway, I’d wanted to ride in a fire engine since I was four.

  If I was good, and I asked very nicely, one of the blokes might even let me wear his helmet.

  I didn’t bother to say goodbye to Dave Mountjoy and his boys.

  It turned out that I’d overestimated my powers of self-repair and I felt more like a snide thruppence than nine bright pennies.

  The wash helped a bit. And a couple of aspirin dulled some of the aches and pains. But my right hand felt like it was still in the fire, and the lump on the back of my head (lumps, if you counted the one from the coshing the other night) pounded away like the Light Brigade charging into the Valley of Death. Someone had blundered all right, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was me.

  And the change of clothes didn’t help one bit.

  I’d run out of suits, and I had to resort to the old brown demob number that I hadn’t worn for eight years. It still fitted as well as it ever had,
which is to say not at all, and I was definitely not at my dapper best. Maman would have tutted loudly, rolled her eyes and sent me back to my room to change. Papa would have rolled his eyes too, but that would have been at Maman. He would have been laughing at me.

  I was also out of clean shirts and had to borrow two from Jerry. Miss Summers looked well enough in hers, but mine threatened to split across the back every time I laughed. Fortunately, I wasn’t feeling all that jocular. I’ve always been a traditionalist, much preferring white shirts to grey.

  Jerry made a big pot of tea, broke open a fresh packet of custard creams and listened with some attention as Miss Summers told him what had happened. I was still croaking too much for any extended conversation, and every time I coughed – which was often – I tasted smoke.

  When she’d finished, Jerry asked a lot of questions she couldn’t answer. They both looked at me from time to time, but I just pointed helplessly to my throat. So Jerry settled for shaking his head a lot, muttering something about mad buggers and asking me, I suspect rhetorically, what I thought I was playing at.

  I told him it wasn’t my fault. These things just sort of happened. He then asked me why it had just sort of happened that I’d dashed into a burning building to rescue some little toerag who’d shown a strong inclination to damage me badly. I told him I would take full responsibility for that, although Bix had something to do with the successful outcome.

  He shook his head again and then smeared something cooling and greasy on the back of my hand and wrapped a bandage around it.

  When I asked him, he found a recording of Bix Beiderbecke playing ‘Mississippi Mud’ and that worked its magic and bucked me up no end.

  It was nudging on for six o’clock in the evening, and I was so restored and full of beans that I fell fast asleep on Jerry’s chaise longue.

  TWENTY

  ‘My, my,’ James Fitzgerald said when I eventually tracked him down, which hadn’t been all that difficult, ‘someone’s been in the wars. And,’ he added with a malign smile after looking me up and down for a few seconds, ‘been awarded a costume civil for his services.’

  He was sitting behind a large, dark desk in a cluttered and gloomy little room at the back of a house in Romilly Street. The grimy window behind him looked out on to a singularly dispiriting and lifeless vista. The dismal back wall of the house behind, unrelieved, as far as I could see, by window or door, stood only a few feet away, like a large and impassive bouncer. With Harold standing behind me and the wall in front of me, I felt hemmed in. I stared at the wall, over Mr Fitz’s head, for a few seconds. The mortar was crumbling away. It desperately needed repointing. Much as I felt, in fact.

  I tore myself away from the riveting view and sighed. The irony of a man who looked a little like Alfred Hitchcock and who had the dress sense of Gabby Hayes commenting on my sartorial misfortunes was not lost on me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I had a little trouble yesterday.’

  He tilted his head on one side and looked at me sympathetically. Well, it would have been a sympathetic gesture in almost anyone else. He could just have been laughing at me. ‘Do go on,’ he said.

  I raised the carrier bag that was dangling from my good hand and placed it on a pile of papers on his desk.

  He raised his eyebrows inquisitively and smiled at me.

  ‘It’s your “goods”,’ I said. ‘I found them.’

  ‘You just found them?’ he said.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I suddenly realized where they had to be.’

  He reached out one pudgy hand and pulled the bag towards him. He peered into it. ‘Hmm,’ he said, then he pushed the bag away. ‘Well, thank you, Tony, that’s very decent of you.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’d like things to be straight between us.’

  ‘Oh, they are, Tony, they are. I know you’re a decent sort, honest as the day is long and all that.’ He drummed his fingers on the desk and hummed tunelessly. Suddenly, he looked up and smiled his vicious little smile. ‘I wonder if I might impose on you to do something for me?’

  I shrugged. It hurt a bit. The shoulders and neck were still sore. ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’d be awfully grateful if you’d be so kind as to take these goods to my dear friend Nelson Smith. As a peace offering.’

  I said nothing and stared at the wall. It just stared blankly back.

  ‘You look puzzled, Tony,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I thought you wanted this stuff back,’ I said. ‘There was a certain amount of fuss about it.’

  He waved his hand dismissively. ‘The goods themselves are a mere bagatelle, Tony. Of very little value. But the principle is of the utmost importance. And the principle is that no one takes anything from me.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. And I did. I really did. I tried to keep any resentment at his cavalier approach to my life out of my voice. ‘Do you know where I’ll find your very good friend?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t imagine that he’s left the leafy lanes of Ladbroke Grove yet, Tony, but, no doubt, he’ll be out and about in an hour or two.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In fact, I have it on good authority that he may well be in the Frighted Horse at opening time. He is hoping, I understand, to meet young Ricky Mountjoy there. I believe he will be disappointed.’ He smiled at me knowingly. ‘Why don’t you find a pastry and a cup of coffee somewhere? You look as if you could do with a sit-down.’ He nodded at the looming presence behind me. ‘Harold, show the gentleman out.’

  I reached out and grabbed hold of the bag, and then a heavy hand fell on my shoulder and guided me away from the desk and on to the narrow little landing outside the office. The door closed firmly behind me.

  I sat away from the window, in the shadows at the back of the Moka, and sipped miserably at my rapidly cooling coffee. I felt very gloomy. It’s just as well that no one had ever told me that life was going to be easy, or fair. I would have been forced to disagree strongly.

  I looked down at the brown carrier-bag on the seat next to me and thought it would be just my luck for Inspector Rose, or his altogether less attractive sergeant, to turn up and ask to have a butcher’s inside. Still, the bag itself wasn’t as suspicious as the creased, greasy one the stuff had originally been in. This was a new one, acquired first thing that morning when I’d nipped around the corner to the Co-op in order to fill Jerry’s larder with the staples he’d generously bestowed on me and my guests over the past few days. He’d been uncharacteristically moody. I’d tried to jolly him out of it by pointing out that at least I’d stopped maundering on about Paris. He’d smiled, but he’d said he actually preferred life to be a bit boring. I’d agreed with him and promised to be much more boring in the future.

  I was startled out of my reflections by the sound of a cup and saucer being plonked down on the Formica opposite me. I looked up and saw Viv Laurence standing there.

  ‘This seat taken?’ she said.

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said, ‘but what are you doing here?’

  She slid on to the seat, brushed her hair back and then leaned forward and sighed. ‘Got fed up,’ she said. ‘This isn’t much of a life, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Tucked away in that suffocating little house, nothing to do but listen to the wireless all day . . . “Woman’s Hour”, “Workers’ Playtime”, “Listen with Mother”, “Mrs Dale’s bloody Diary” . . . It’s not me, Tony.’ She picked up her cup and noisily sipped tea. ‘We all hate the life. Of course we do. We all want out. But I don’t know . . .’ She trailed off and shook her head.

  ‘This could be your chance,’ I said. ‘I think your mum’s planning to leave everything to you. There won’t be much, I don’t suppose, but there’s the house and a few bob probably. Why don’t you come and see her before . . . You know.’

  She shook her head, fumbled in her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t forgive her for abandoning me and leaving me in that place with that horrible old man.’ She act
ually shuddered at the thought of the old boy. She lit a cigarette and drew on it. Her hand was shaking slightly.

  ‘I think she wants to make it up to you, if she can. That’s why she wanted me to find you. She was very young, and it wasn’t her decision.’

  She sat back and blew a thin plume of blue-grey smoke towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t want her to make it up to me,’ she said.

  ‘Come to see her. Tell her,’ I said.

  She shook her head firmly. Her hair fluttered about, and her impressive cleavage trembled. For the first time, I could see that she bore a resemblance to Daphne. She certainly had very little of the Mountjoy look.

  She smoked for a while, staring past me, and then she suddenly seemed to notice me properly and leaned forward. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you look—’

  ‘Terrible. I know,’ I said. ‘It’s been a hard couple of days, and the suit is an old one and the shirt’s borrowed.’

  ‘No,’ she said, waving her cigarette about. ‘You look a bit like that Dirk Bogarde. Only older and a lot more lived-in.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I think.’

  I left Viv in the Moka. She was still smoking, still drinking tea and still refusing to have anything to do with Daphne. As I walked towards the Frighted Horse, the carrier bag clutched tightly in my left hand, I realized that there was a bit more of a spring in my step. Somehow, she’d cheered me up.

  It was another dull old day, and the grubby streets of Soho and the dirty buildings, streaked by pigeon poo, desperately needed some sun, or a few of the louche, colourful characters of the night.

  I suddenly had that strange prickly feeling on the back of my neck that made me think I was being followed. I sauntered on for a few seconds and then stopped to look into a shop window and cast a surreptitious look behind me. I didn’t recognize anyone, and there was no one acting oddly. Well, no more oddly than was to be expected in Soho just before opening time. A thin, frail, threadbare alkie in a greasy gaberdine mac stopped next to me and peered vacantly into the window as well. There wasn’t much there apart from half a dozen dead flies and a few paperback books with garish paintings of femmes fatales in various stages of undress on their curling covers.